Tag: philosophy

Assumptions provide fence-sitting answers. They give the impression of solving issues but they’re really just band-aids that make us feel safer. Half-truths also hinder inquisitiveness.

“We must be ignorant of what we are looking for, or we would not go looking for it.” — Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Rather, like a dog with a bone, we should be running off for a half hour and then coming back. The external stimulus has to be interesting enough that even we get bored of it, we revisit it later.

The last thing we want to do is externalize the whimsical nature of life to the certitude of a photo. Life goes on beyond the screen. Memory hinges on context and keeps developing each time the story gets told.

Confidence basks in the chase of uncertainty if only to ensure that the truth remains unfixed.

We mistakenly believe that we find ourselves through our material possessions. But experiences are what put the bones in the goose. The rest (clothing, tattoos) are just signaling.

We mistakenly believe that speeding up leads to better thought. However, hastiness leads to impulsiveness and myopia. It takes patience to link things together. Information leads to more information.

We also mistakenly believe that certainty is the way to go or it’s not worth trying at all. But fragility is what us unique and human. Jazz musicians work through a whole bag of things before they find the right note.

The imagination bleeds into the world. What we see comes into line with how we want to see it. Everything is practice, a melding together, as one experience, one question, and trial and error lead to the next.

How do people run life at a dizzying pace while also wanting society to replicate the 1950s?

Technology facilitates progress yet turns back the clock on thinking. Mobile phones allow anyone with an account to amplify misinformation and weaken the willpower to do good. Even the inactive can recharge into fully blown acolytes.

Reality TV is phony, but it can become all too real with astonishing rapidity. It turns amateurs into professionals, laymen into experts. Evil spreads by way of stupidity, invading human brains the way viruses enter human bodies.

Instead, what we need are more ideas that redirect the running memes in our head and compel us to emerge from our cocoons. The bubble has already popped.

The world we inhabit is the one we think we make.

Like science, it is worth questioning everything that tries to demand certainty. Stuck in a state of ripeness, we are always opening up without ever falling behind.

People like to gravitate toward solutions. They’d rather think they know something than cope with all the anxiety surrounding the mysterious present.

Truth is a mental implantation. In reality, we just believe the story we tell ourselves. Conversely, thinking is a ‘dialogue between the two me’s.’

The curious mind acts like inserting graphite into a pencil through two layers of wood. As they say, genius is one brain with two schools of thought.

Paradoxes are the upshot of freedom. We should feel free to contradict ourselves on a regular basis if it means the latest solution is indeed superior.

In search of the latest best, we triumph over the matter of what’s trending while clinging to what works.

Popular thought can be deceiving. A constant repetition of simple ideas warps new perspectives and new tools. While the mainstream excels in dulling cognition, it is the wise that need no further telescope.

Relaxation is an art, antithesis to the obsession of doing. If we could be immediately present, time would slow down. We’d be able to hear the individual ticks in the clock.

The route to super consciousness is paved with unplugging from the maelstrom of 24/7 news and unnecessary push messages. It is all the distraction that makes us less happy. Dopamine is addictive but ephemeral.

When we’re interacting in excess, we’re missing out on recharging and thinking. Always-on is benign until it isn’t.

How real is any of this, our minds continually intertwined with the screen of irreality. We can only be certain of what can see, surely.

But the computer is an extension of our brain. Technology presents an alternative existence that replaces the status-quo with a broad range of possibilities. We are just beginning to see the amalgamation of mind and machine.

Reality has been in the ‘August imagination‘ all along. But like a parachute, cognition is just now cracking open to double its processing power in collaboration with artificial intelligence and algorithms that are constantly improving.

Technology stretches our eyes beyond optical error, begging for a fresh approach. Reality and irreality will work together to fill in the illusion of an empty calendar as we know it. Looking neither right nor left, the human mind works ahead.

Whether you set the route or leave it open-ended, you can discover things along the way.

Constraints produce their own magic. They make you innovate based off what you have to play with. But so too do indefinite destinations.

Out of curiosity blooms everything.

The more we know, the more we want to know. We permit our heuristic temptations to guide the discovery process. The rush to fill ignorance with self-knowledge makes us feel alive.

The world is more like a playground than a camp. It begs us to take more information than we need. But in borrowing its widgets, we have to reciprocate to ensure what we put out or reinvent comes back to enrich nature itself.